Next week’s hearing is expected to bring more attention in the U.S. to the measure, which would give the UN more control over cybersecurity, data privacy, technical standards and the Web’s address system. It would also allow foreign government-owned Internet providers to charge extra for international traffic and allow for more price controls.

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold the hearing and hear testimony from Robert McDowell, a Republican commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); David Gross, a former State Department official; and Sally Shipman Wentworth, the senior manager of public policy for the nonprofit Internet Society.

The Internet is currently governed under a “multi-stakeholder” approach that gives power to a host of nonprofits, rather than governments.

Strickling said that system brings more ideas and flexibility to Internet policymaking.

“We lose that when we turn this over to a group of just governments,” Strickling said.

In an op-ed earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal, McDowell warned that “a top-down, centralized, international regulatory overlay is antithetical to the architecture of the Net.”

“Productivity, rising living standards and the spread of freedom everywhere, but especially in the developing world, would grind to a halt as engineering and business decisions become politically paralyzed within a global regulatory body,” McDowell wrote.

He said some governments feel excluded from Internet policymaking and want more control over the process.

“And let's face it, strong-arm regimes are threatened by popular outcries for political freedom that are empowered by unfettered Internet connectivity,” McDowell wrote.